Tuesday, September 14, 2010
2 AM. I might as well try this – I have had what sleep or semi-sleep I’m going to have for a while. Just for the record, I’m getting awfully tired of being sick for what seems like no reason. Yesterday was a breakthrough of sorts – maybe – but I’m sick again, so how much good is it?
I’m not in the best of moods, but pray continue your exposition of the three kinds of influences our minds and bodies interact with – or whatever other subject you prefer, if not that one.
You might as well read or kill time in some other way – watch a movie, perhaps – because this would take more energy than you have to give. And perhaps more sleep will follow.
9:30 AM. I admit, I’m tempted to hold a grudge. I did finally get some sleep last night but only after being up from 2 to 4. What’s going on?
You’re looking for a miracle in a way that would reinforce your worst assumptions, habits, and attitudes.
Oh?
You are thinking that a change in attitude – which is mostly theoretical until put into practice – will be enough to change everything. Well, it will, maybe, if translated, if grounded. Otherwise, how could it?
So what do I do? And, how do I think of who I’m talking to right now?
Well, that is an interesting subject – and can you feel how immediately the slight residual uneasiness in your breathing smoothed out because you were interested in some gossip about the way things are? That’s part of your pattern, interested in everything except what strikes you as mundane and strikes everyone else as common-sense underpinning.
I yam what I yam.
Yes – but that doesn’t mean you are what you have self-defined yourself to be, or what you have experienced yourself to be. You see that easily enough in non-physical terms.
All right, I get your point.
Now as to the question, we don’t want to divide these sessions between what is for your ears only and what belongs to others as well. That will soon cause problems to you as you try to patch things together, suppressing this, adding that.
But that’s just basic editing. I can probably do it. You’d prefer to have me spill my guts about whatever we find about asthma, I suppose.
Nothing shameful it, why not?
Well I noticed that Angelo [in Babe In The Woods] began to move away from his previous sort of helpless captivity to asthma when he ceased to be embarrassed about it.
Not exactly a cause-and-effect; more like a simultaneous loosening.
Hey, whose book is it?
In your present mood you don’t want the answer to that.
Very funny. But anyway, you seem to be implying that public disclosure of the mechanism that has intertwined it in my life would be of benefit to others?
And to yourself, no less. Confession is good for the soul. Know thyself. All those clichés. And you know full well that one of your qualifications for the job is that you are discreet about others, less so about yourself.
Less so, but hardly open.
It’s a comparative thing. “Less so” will do, if you choose to continue.
My lungs are absolutely quiet at the moment, I suddenly realize. It’s startling. I suppose you’ve made your point, damn you.
Wrong attitude. It’s like cursing your lungs for suffering on your behalf.
Oh well. Let’s talk about who I’m talking to and what it means, as you started to do.
We said that human is subject to three kinds of forces, which could also be stated, “is assisted by” or “depends upon” or even “extends to.” In other words, don’t allow an implication of one-way forces to enter into this. From there, it is no distance at all to the victim/villain scenario.
And health is the only area of my life where I’m inclined to fall into that, isn’t it?
Presently. You’ve spent plenty of time in it in the past in terms of romantic or professional relationships, but you did finally (if tentatively) grow out of it. This is perhaps why you/we have chosen to put the main remaining stumbling block front and center.
Victim’s Last Stand, asthma?
Is there another aspect of your life that tempts you to feel helpless and set upon?
Can’t think of any. My life is mostly magical.
So it is as you have told others, the problem within yourself can only be revealed to you by reason of a situation seemingly external to yourself.
I see that. My analogy [that I frequently use] is that if a man had a problem with women, and spent his entire life in a room alone, the problem would never manifest, but he’d still have the problem.
Sound familiar?
It gets your attention, when you can’t breathe and can’t stop the problem by any technique that works so well in other parts of your life, and you have to fall back on chemical sprays.
Well, if we can have your attention when you are breathing, there isn’t any need to get it in the drastic way we’ve used till now.
But we went through this yesterday!
You got the first run, the initial take; the subject wasn’t exactly plumbed at any depth.
Proceed [he says, rather glumly].
So you say (or write, rather) but what you think is, “maybe I’ll go check on my e-mail.”
I’m not overjoyed at the prospect, no.
Come back when you’re ready.
Or you’ll set me wheezing?
Or maybe you’ll set yourself wheezing, have you thought of that?
Pretty self-divided, then.
On this subject some of your group want peace and quiet, others want to bust things up.
And the result is asthma?
The result is one of many ways that self-division manifests. This isn’t all about you, you know. You’re also an example of forces that play out in various ways in everyone’s life. If it doesn’t manifest physically, perhaps emotionally, or mentally. Life has all kinds of problems and manifestation of problems.